B084 Office IEQ energy

Energy impact of indoor environment quality acceptance for air-conditioned offices of Hong Kong

Brief:

Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in air-conditioned offices of Hong Kong can be benchmarked by an IEQ index associated with thermal comfort, indoor air quality, aural and visual comfort. Maintaining an acceptable IEQ for air-conditioned office buildings to occupants consumes a considerable amount of thermal energy. This study correlates thermal energy consumption with the overall occupant acceptance of IEQ in some air-conditioned offices dominated by the thermal comfort and the indoor air quality by dilution. With the input parameters of the building stocks in Hong Kong, the office portfolios regarding the thermal energy consumption and the IEQ index are determined by Monte Carlo simulations. This study reports the unit increment of thermal energy use for the target IEQ acceptance level for air-conditioned offices of Hong Kong and the thermal energy consumption corresponding to a desirable percentage of IEQ acceptances respectively. The results showed a non-linear increasing trend of annual thermal energy consumption for IEQ improvement at the offices of higher IEQ benchmarks. The thermal energy consumption for visual comfort and indoor air quality would also be significant in these offices. This study provides useful information to evaluate thermal energy impact due to the desired IEQ in air-conditioned offices.

Further Information:

Mui KW, Wong LT, Cheung CT, 2009. Energy impact of indoor environment quality acceptance for air-conditioned offices of Hong Kong, Proceedings of 2009 conference on Green Building Towards Eco-City, 11-14 October, Taipei, Taiwan, Paper A04, 1-12.